Wal-Mart Case Analysis Essay Example for Free

Wal-Mart Case Analysis Essay Wal-Mart is the largest retail store in the United States today and it has remained that way for several decades now. In order to stay ahead of the competition Wal-Mart employs different kinds of strategies and campaigns. One of its strategies is to dominate the retail market through its philosophy â€Å"Everyday Low Prices. † The essence is this philosophy is to cut the price of an item to the minimum, lower the markup and earn profit on the increased volume of sales (Patrick Hayden, Seung Lee, and Kate McMahon Mike Pereira 4). Though this has generated a huge amount of profits for its shareholders, the company has to sacrifice two things: the quality of their products and the welfare of its employees (Scott Dalgleish 1) This company philosophy has been a success for Wal-Mart. According to Jim Hightower, the Waltons, owners of Wal-Mart are some of the richest people in the world. S. Robson Walton is ranked by London’s â€Å"Rich List 2001† as the wealthiest human on the planet having more than $65 billion surpassing Bill Gates. (1) This does not mean that things will continue the way they are. In the future, the public will eventually discover that sacrificing quality over cost is not worth the penny they save from buying at Wal-Mart. With all the bad publicity and reputation Wal-Mart has earned because of this company policy time will come that the public may no longer patronize Wal-Mart’s retail stores which may cause tremendous losses for its existing and future stockholders. According to Allen Long, Wal-Mart’s stocks has fallen by 11% over the last five years perhaps due to the bad publicity the company has been getting over the years. 2) If the company seeks to avoid this disaster, it must first give respect to its hundreds of thousands of employees who work for them. They must be given adequate wages, health-care benefits and must comply with existing labor laws. As the larges retail store in the United States, it is possible for the company to give proper wages and benefits to its employees while at the same time maintaining the price of its products low. Foreign Supplier Initially, Wal-Mart advertised its â€Å"Buy American† campaign. But over time it became clear that this was just an advertising gimmick rather than a company policy. As it is important for Wal-Mart to maintain its prices very low, they had to turn to foreign suppliers which can deliver to them goods at lower prices compared to their US-based suppliers. According to Jim Hightower, Wal-Mart is the largest importer of Chinese-made products in the world, buying $10 billion worth of merchandise from several thousand Chinese factories. (2) For the foreign suppliers, it became necessary to resort to different means in order to meet the price requirements of Wal-Mart. Some factories in Bangladesh had to employ child labor to keep its production costs down. Some companies have failed to comply with certain environmental laws while some companies in Hong Kong had to mislabel their products to make it appear that they are from Malaysia to avoid taxes. This has only resulted to further reduction of the quality of the products being sold by Wal-Mart in its retail stores (Thomas C. Hayes 2). The resort to foreign suppliers has seriously affected several companies in the United States. Jobs have been lost in the United States as a result of this company practice. For the foreign suppliers, the business may be good for one to two years but these foreign suppliers must realize that they too have been affected by the Wal-Mart Effect. They have violated their own country’s labor laws. They have deceived the US government. Eventually however, their labor laws violations in their own country will be discovered and their resort to mislabeling to avoid taxes here in the United States will be found out by the US Coast Guard. In fact, a number of these products by Sino Overseas, a Hong Kong based company, has been caught smuggled in the United States. This loss is disastrous for any business. If these foreign suppliers will calculate the risks involved in engaging in these operations just to meet Wal-Mart’s price requirements for its products, it is possible they will discover that its not worth the business risks they are taking. Local Retailing Stores  One of the strategies of Wal-Mart is to dominate the retail industry. In the past decades, it has succeeded in doing the same as it has been ranked as the world’s number one retail store and the number one company in the world in terms of sales on the Fortune 500 list. Also, Wal-Mart is currently ranked as the worlds number one retailer and the number one company in the world in terms of sales (over $200 billion) on the Fortune 500 list (Patrick Hayden, Seung Lee, Kate McMahon, and Mike Pereira 4). When a Wal-Mart retail store opens in a community, other retailers in the community suffocate because Wal-Mart is capable of reducing the price of its products down to the barest minimum (Abigail Goldman and Nancy Cleeland 2). This is confirmed in a study conducted by David Neumark. He said that â€Å"The employment results indicate that a Wal-Mart store opening reduces county-level retail employment by about 150 workers, implying that each Wal-Mart worker replaces approximately 1. 4 retail workers. This represents a 2. 7 percent reduction in average retail employment. (1) This race to the bottom strategy employed by Wal-Mart may have generated made it number one in the retail industry. It may have generated a lot of employment. It has, however, also created unemployment insofar as the employees of its competitors are concerned. When its competitors close their business other employees lose their jobs also. I believe this destructive force of Wal-Mart may someday come to an end as the public will eventually realize that sacrificing quality over a few pennies of saving is not worth it.

The American Civil War Essay -- History Historical Civil War Essays

The American Civil War In May of 1861 five states in the upper south United States seceded from the Union and joined the seven states already seceded and created the Confederate States of America. This was the beginning of the Civil War; it was the Union against the Confederates. Many People believed that the war would be over quickly they thought it was more of an uprising then a full on war. Nobody expected it to last four years and take so many lives. The Civil War was a serious test for the new democracy of the United States, it tested the strength of the government and all of the people involved. This would be a defining moment for the United States.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One of the reasons for the south secession was the fact that the north was going to abolish slavery and the south still strongly believed in slavery. It was a very strong part of there work force, most of the income was from agriculture and the slaves worked the fields for the farmers. Then in early 1863 Lincoln passd the Emacipation Proclamation this stated that all slaves in the south were free and were welcome in the north. The north hope this would bring African American workers north and they would fight the war with the north. Another leading cause of the war was the election of president Lincoln he won the election but did not get a single electoral vote from the south. Lincoln was a strong abolishionist and he thought that if slavery was going to stay it should not be allowed in any new states joining the union. This angered the south and they felt that they had not been fairly represented in the election. This fueled many in the south to question if they should stay with the north. There were many important battles in the war but the first was the first battle at Bull Run. The Union sent a group of volunteer soldiers and they were not ready to fight them lacking training and they were disorderly on the battlefield. The confederate?s army was better prepared for the battle and they had a constant flow of troops coming in so they forced the Union soldiers to retreat. There were nearly 5,000 casualties, this showed that this was going to be long and drawn out. Many civilians came out to watch this battle because they thought that it would be a good form of entertainment, they soon learned that this was not true and that this war would be a bloody one. The Union also learned that th... ... was on of the most important points in American history is proved that our government was strong and here to stay. Through out the entire war congress and the other branches continued to function with out problems. They showed that even under dire circumstances like war in your back yard the American people can be strong. Many people today still honor the soldiers who lost there lives by holding civil war reninactments and the sites of famous battles. The largest one is when they reninact Gettysburg they do it every summer and include more then 3,000 people. When the Union won the war it proved a point, it showed that a sound government and solid leadership is best. The entire time the American people stood behind President Lincoln and General Grant. The confederates didn?t have a full government established and they had problems getting descions made and problems solved quickly. America is now a stronger nation because of this war with its self. Works Cited: ?Civil War? www.civilwar.com Online Google 14 Jan. 2005. ?Civil War? www.civil-war.net Online Google 14 Jan. 2005. Keith D. Dickinson ?The Civil War for Dummies.? New York: For Dummies press. March 2001

Reduction of Demand for Drugs by Incorporation of Elasticity

Prohibited drugs have been one of the major concerns of the federal government for the past decades. Various negative effects of prohibited drugs not only on the user itself but also on the immediate community of the latter have been identified. Due to this, various programs has been launched by the federal government just to regulate and prevent citizens from drug addiction. One of the said government projects to minimize drug addiction would be the intensification of drug treatments aside from the border patrolling etc. The question now would be which of the identified two governments program will be more effective?Since prohibited drugs are addictive, users will continue to buy the said good even if there is a high risk involving its usage, not to mention that it is expensive (Kuehlwein, 2007). In other words, drug users will continue to buy as long as their will be someone who will supply them with those prohibited drugs regardless how much will it cost. Therefore, the intensific ation of drug treatment programs would be more effective as compared to the border patrolling since the former will reduce the addiction of the drug users which will eventually shifts its demand elasticity towards elastic demand.On the other hand, border patrolling will only lower down the supply of prohibited drugs in the market which only further increases its price level due to possible shortage as authorities on borders confiscate more prohibited drugs. At the end of the day, the root of the problem will not be solved by only patrolling on borders since drug users will always find ways on how to get marijuana or cocaine on the streets.This makes the intensification of drug treatment programs more effective since this attacks the root of the problem by minimizing the drug dependency of users which eventually leads to quitting drug usage. At this point, it is already clear that through reducing the demand of drug users to prohibited drugs will solve the said problem of the governm ent more effectively than with the border patrolling. It would be better on the part of the federal government to concentrate more on the drug treatment programs than with border patrolling. AppendixWith the drug treatment program, the elasticity of demand of drug users will shift from being inelastic to being elastic. The good thing with this will be, under the elastic demand; by the time drug users will quit using prohibited drugs, there is a big possibility that they will no longer go back into being drug addicts since they are no longer drug dependent. Whereas, border patrolling will do only no harm on the demand of the drug users and at the same time will only boost the prices of prohibited drugs on the streets as shown by demand curve1.Demand curve 1 is inelastic while demand curve 2 is elastic and the latter is the end effect of the intensification of drug treatment programs. Reference Kuehlwein, M. (2007). Cocaine and the Elasticity of Demand. Retrieved February 21, 2008, fr om http://images. google. com. ph/imgres? imgurl=http://www. unc. edu/depts/econ/byrns_web/GreatIdeas/ART/GI05-12. gif&imgrefurl=http://www. unc. edu/depts/econ/byrns_web/GreatIdeas/02-CoreMicro/GI-05. htm&h=411&w=909&sz=10&hl=tl&start=13&um=1&tbnid=wBaZSi2QPBBJ3M:&tbnh=66&tbnw=147&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dinelastic%2Bdemand%26ndsp%3D18%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dtl%26sa%3DN

Slavery Is A Terrible Thing - 905 Words

Most people understand that slavery was a terrible thing, but most might not fully understand the struggles that free colored men and women endured as well. While slavery was legal, free men would often be kidnapped and forced into slavery, and sometimes slaves actually escape to freedom. If an African American was considered a free man, he or she had to get official documentations stating so. Even after the documents were given to them, some of them still found themselves as slaves. There are many different stories about slavery, but just because a slave escapes from slavery, does not mean he or she is free from a slave’s mindset. Although they were in different positions in life, slaves and free African Americans experienced the same hardships, fears, and daily struggles. Solomon Northup is a free black man. One day while he was out at the park, he was approached by a man, and the man introduced him to two men. 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